The Desktop Workspace

On a desktop-sized window ArcaneMetriX lays itself out as a workspace rather than a page: a navigation rail down the left, one command bar per panel, and a second pane you can put any view into. The rail and the second pane are desktop-only: a phone keeps its bottom tab bar and its Search tab. The command bar is not — a phone gets the same row, and the end of this chapter says how it differs there.

The Navigation Rail

Every tab is in the rail, and each one lists its own views underneath it while it is open. The tab and its views sit on a single tinted block so the group reads as one thing, and the bar down the block’s edge says which pane is showing it: the right edge for the main pane, the left edge for the side pane.

The Builder’s tab wears the deck’s card count where the other tabs wear an icon. A small badge on its corner counts what the deck carries but does not count toward it: sideboard, maybeboard and companion cards. A deck with a rules problem turns the count red and lists the problems in the tab’s tooltip.

Two Views at Once

The rail is how you put something in the side pane:

Anything can be docked, including a second copy of what the main pane already has. Drag the divider between the panes to resize; each pane keeps a minimum width so neither can be squeezed into uselessness.

Split the side pane in two by dragging a view onto the top or bottom third of it. The pane then holds two stacked slots, each with its own header and close button, and a handle between them you can drag. Dropping onto the middle third replaces the whole pane instead.

The side pane, its split and its width are remembered between sessions.

The Command Bar

Each panel has one row of controls at the top of its pane: the deck’s name and format, its counts, then its filters, view options, tools and actions. What a bar holds belongs to the view you are looking at, so switching from Deck to Stats changes the row.

The bar adapts to the room it has. As a pane narrows it drops labels for glyphs, folds the counts down to numbers, and finally moves its controls into the overflow menu at the right, all without wrapping to a second line. The menu always keeps a Layout & Sort row, so the view options are reachable even when the bar has no room to show them, and Clear is always set apart at the bottom.

When the same tab is open in both panes, the things both bars would say identically (the deck’s name, its counts, a pod’s name, a collection’s value) are drawn only by the pane with more room. The narrow pane spends its bar on what is actually different about the view it holds, and if that leaves nothing at all, it draws no bar.

On a phone

A phone gets the same bar, with one difference: it has no width to trade away, so it never folds anything into the overflow menu. The row spans the screen, sticks to the top of the content as you scroll, and scrolls sideways instead. A glowing edge tells you there is more bar that way, and it fades out when you reach the end. Everything the view can do is on that one row, so nothing is more than a swipe away.

The Command Palette

Press Ctrl+K (⌘K on a Mac) anywhere in the app to open the palette. Type a few letters of what you want and press Enter. It matches loosely, so svdk finds Save deck and gen finds Go to Builder › Genome.

The palette knows two kinds of thing:

• Where to go: every tab and every view, as Go to …, and the same list again as Dock … in the side pane so you can open something on the left without reaching for the rail.
• What to do: the actions available for whatever is on screen; save, import, the exports, copy, share, undo and redo, the view modes and sort orders, Genome’s zoom and physics, the Library’s filters, the Collection’s exports, and more.

Arrow keys and Tab move through the results, Enter runs the selection, Escape closes. An action that belongs to another view brings that view up first, so Genome: zoom in is one step from the deck list rather than two.

Usage Tips

Tip

Build with the numbers in view. Shift+click Stats to dock it beside the deck. Every edit updates it live, so you can watch the curve and the color balance move as you cut and add, instead of switching tabs to check.

Tip

Keep Search on the left while you build. Search is the side pane’s usual occupant. Leave it there and the + button on a result adds to the deck you can see, with no tab switching at all.

Tip

Three things at once. Drag a view onto the bottom third of the side pane to split it: deck on the right, Stats and Synergies stacked on the left. Drag the handle between the two slots to give whichever one you are reading more room.

Tip

Two views of the same deck. Dock the Builder beside itself and put the left one on Synergies and the right on Deck. Both are the same deck, so a cut on the right updates the analysis on the left as you make it.

Tip

Ctrl+K beats hunting. The palette reaches anything on screen, including controls the bar has folded away on a narrow pane. It is usually the fastest route to an export or a view you have not opened yet.

Tip

A narrow pane is not a lesser one. Every panel reflows rather than clipping: the Genome’s card details move from the right of the graph to a sheet along the bottom, the Card Detail Modal’s sections drop to one column, and the command bar sheds detail in a fixed order. Dock freely and resize to taste.